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Thursday, August 31, 2017

A Jewish umbrella group has filed a police complaint over demonstrators in Rotterdam shouting in Arabic about killing Jews.

The Dutch Central Jewish Board said in a statement Wednesday that the July 22 incident occurred at a rally advertised by a newly formed organization called the Palestinian Community in the Netherlands, or PGNL. The Rotterdam branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which also advertised the event on its Facebook page, was the real organizer of the rally, according to the statement.

A day earlier, BDS Rotterdam shared a call on Facebook to attend the rally by Amin Abou Rashed, a senior operative of the Al Aqsa Foundation, which the Dutch secret service and judiciary in 2003 flagged as a Hamas front and banned.

Participants in the rally, which was protesting the use of security measures by Israel around the Al-Aqsa mosque following a deadly terrorist attack there, shouted in Arabic, “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning,” the statement said. The cry relates to an event in the seventh century when Muslims massacred and expelled Jews from the town of Khaybar, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia.

The Rotterdam rally, including the anti-Semitic chants, was broadcast live by the Shebab News Agency, an organization banned by the Palestinian Authority over its alleged ties to Hamas.

A senior reporter has left Channel 4 News amid presenting a package last week promoting a racist Islamist who supported ramming attacks. Last Thursday Channel 4 News aired a film presented by reporter Assed Baig showcasing Muslim women who “fight back by rejecting stereotypes”. The film heaped praise on notorious anti-Israel activist Nadia Chan, who has previously:

- Said she: “strongly advocates that the parasitic entity known as ‘Israel’ MUST cease to exist. Furthermore, every single Israeli is a parasite.”;

- Appeared on Iranian state television to praise “the armed resistance from the Islamic Jihad … and also Hamas” in Israel;

- Suggested Palestinians should use “everyday items to resist, whether it’s knives, cars … everyday items to strike the fear in the hearts of their oppressors”;

- Described white people using the racial slur “honkies”; (...)

Channel 4 has pulled the report and video from its website and deleted tweets promoting the piece…

From its very inception, Israel has been faced with conventional and asymmetrical military and political threats from its neighbors, coupled with organized economic and diplomatic boycotts spearheaded by the Arab League and the Organization for Islamic Cooperation. The Arab-Israeli conflict is unique, however, in that in conjunction with this state action targeting the country, an army of political activists is provided tens of millions of euros, dollars and francs by the European Union, European governments, the United Nations, churches and private foundations to produce rank propaganda, harass and seek arrest warrants of traveling Israeli officials and advance economic warfare against the State of Israel.

These campaigns go far beyond a critique of specific Israeli policies but are aimed at the country’s very existence.

In several cases, the organizations involved in these campaigns advise their members to game Israel’s border controls and lie about their purpose for coming to the country. Many of these political warriors also come to Israel and the Palestinian Authority to riot, destroy property and engage the police and military in violent confrontations and directly participate in hostilities. Networking with NGOs and other organizations affiliated with terrorist groups like Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a regular staple of these visits. The International Solidarity Movement is perhaps the best known of the groups engaged in this activity.

For years, the Israeli government expressed extreme frustration in response to these campaigns, registering countless complaints with their European counterparts and other funders. (...)

We also think it is more effective in fighting BDS for Israeli politicians to educate and, where necessary, confront European counterparts about absurd NGO funding policies. Education has proven highly successful in exposing BDS and has led to positive legislation and court rulings in Switzerland, Spain, Germany and France. In the U.S., a majority of states have passed laws countering BDS, with many more bills pending at both the state and federal level.

On the other hand, the breast-beating and condemnations regarding the legislation, particularly from Europe, are also overwrought and hypocritical. It is hard to think of any other country, including every democracy, that would countenance such active campaigning to deliberately harm the state. Nor would any country — again every democracy included — tolerate a mass influx of foreign protesters to engage its military and police forces in an active conflict zone.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

The international human-rights organization the Simon Wiesenthal Center is considering the inclusion of Berlin’s Mayor Michael Mueller on its list of the top-10 worst cases of anti-Israel and antisemitic activity in 2017 because of an epidemic of hate and BDS in the German capital.

The associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that Mayor Mueller is “mainstreaming the BDS movement that never contributes to the daily life of Palestinians. BDS is widely recognized as antisemitic.”

Cooper said Mueller’s mayoral colleagues in Frankfurt and Munich recognize the antisemitism of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign targeting Israel and are legally banning city support for BDS activities.

“There are two reasons why he [Mueller] could theoretically make the list,” he said. “He is the mayor of, arguably, the most important European city. And his colleagues get it that BDS is not just mean-spirited but downright dangerous.”Berlin has been a hotbed of pro-BDS and lethal antisemitic activities, including nearly 600 Hezbollah supporters and members – and pro-Iranian regime activists – who marched in the main shopping district at the al-Quds Day rally calling for the destruction of the Jewish state in June.

Mueller declined to criticize the al-Quds Day or initiate legal action against the march. The Iranian-regime controlled Islamic Center in Hamburg bused supporters to the annual al-Quds event, which also serves as a rally for the BDS campaign against Israel.

The head of the UK’s main Jewish organisation has accused London’s Barbican arts centre of showing an antisemitic film, which she claims is “blatant propaganda about the Israel-Palestine conflict” masquerading as science fiction.

Gillian Merron, the chief executive of the Board of Deputies, an umbrella organisation representing British Jews, called on the London arts centre to remove the film In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain from the exhibition Into the Unknown: A Journey Through Science Fiction.

The film by a Palestinian artist, Larissa Sansour, and a Danish author, Søren Lind, which combines live action, computer-generated imagery and historical photographs, is described in the exhibition as telling “the story of a fictional ‘narrative resistance’ group which attempts to implant the existence of a fictional civilisation in history by burying fragments of pottery in the ground”.

In a letter to Sandeep Dwesar, the chief operating and financial officer of the Barbican, Merron wrote: “While the Barbican synopsis casts the film as a sci-fi feature about fictitious technologically advanced aliens who land in an area to implant a ‘false history’, I understand that the film is clearly filmed in Israel and that the dialogue is in Arabic and purports to show the ‘aliens’ seeding the land with porcelain in an effort to create the ‘false’ impression that they have a historical connection to it.Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to youRead more

Requesting its removal from the exhibition, Merron said: “It is therefore not much of a stretch to suggest that the film is a means by which to deny the historical Jewish connection to Israel and an exercise in delegitimisation. Accusing Jews of falsifying our connection to Israel smacks of antisemitism and is of grave concern.”

In reply, Dwesar said: “The short film has been programmed for its poetical vision before anything else. ... Having spoken to the curator and the artists, the intention is that the symbolic visual language in the film speaks of history and tradition, yet it cannot necessarily be placed in any distinct or quantifiable time period.”

The Islamic State (also known as ISIS) announced Saturday that it is also responsible for the terrorist attack in the Catalan town of Cambrils, which took place on Friday, a few hours after the terrorist attack in the heart of Barcelona. "We murdered and wounded more than 120 Crusaders and Jews," a statement from the Sunni terror organization read.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

A representative of Stamford Hill’s Shomrim volunteer security group has said antisemitism in the area is “getting worse” after an incident where a man threw a glass bottle at Jewish girls while shouting “Hitler is a good man; good he killed the Jews”.

The girls, aged 15 and 16, were outside their home in Hackney at around 7pm on Sunday when they were approached by the man, in what was described by Shomrim as an “unprovoked antisemitic attack”.

Well Jew hatred is alive and well in the world, as I learned the other night when I was targeted for being an Israeli Jew. I arrived to Lithuania on Tuesday to travel and that same evening signed up for a pub crawl organized by my hostel. At one of the bars our group was standing outside when a random guy not connected to our group asked me where I'm from. I told him Israel then his eyes widened and he said that he's from my "enemy country." I asked him what he meant and he said that he's from Egypt. I tried to be diplomatic and told him that we're not enemies since there's a peace treaty, and that I've traveled to Egypt before and it's a nice place. He asked me if I'd served in the army, and what I "think of politics," and if I think the land of Israel belongs to Jews or to Palestinians. I continued to try to diffuse the situation so I just told him that I'm not at the bar to discuss politics. He kept asking and I kept dismissing him with the same answer. After a few times I shook his hand, told him to have a good evening, and went inside.

Later on throughout the night while inside I noticed that he kept staring at me. After about an hour he came up to me uninvited and told me "You're not from Israel because there is no Israel there is only Palestine." I still was trying to diffuse the situation despite the fact that he was obviously trying to manipulate me into a confrontation, so all I said was, "Look I don't know what you want me to say I'm from Israel." He repeated that there's no such thing as Israel, there is only Palestine, that we are occupying their land. Then he stuck his middle finger in my face. I was shocked and next thing I knew he also grabbed my cheek.

At this point he crossed the line by putting his hands on me so I straightened by hand between him and myself to create distance. I told him to get lost. His buddy came and told me to stop "attacking" his friend. I still was trying to keep my cool after all this continued to hold my hand out so that they wouldn't get close. Aside from keeping them away I was not physical. They still tried though with increasing aggressiveness to get close to me and I started to fear for my safety. Then the original one that spoke to me outside punched me in the face. I didn't try to punch him back and still just held my arm out to create distance. Then he took a glass beer cup, and smashed it over my head, shattering the cup.

Israel can learn from Europe how to battle terrorism, and not only the other way around, according to outgoing EU Ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen.

He told reporters last week at a farewell briefing that “we have a lot to learn from Israel, and Israel has a lot to learn from us.”

This breathtaking declaration comes amid a wave of terrorist attacks in Europe by sleeper agents of ISIS, which as it is being vanquished on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq has activated its deluded sympathizers on the continent.

While European governments are scrambling to meet the newest terrorist threat of murder by vehicle, pedestrians throughout the continent are being struck down by lone wolf terrorists who only need to hijack a car or truck and drive it into crowds. Such tactics have reached European shores after being well-established on a much smaller scale in Israel by Hamas and its ilk. (...)

Another important difference is that most of the terrorist attacks perpetrated in Europe are carried out by citizens of their respective countries, while in Israel only a small percentage of attacks – like the recent one at the Temple Mount – are carried out by Israeli Arabs. Most of our terrorist attacks are carried out by Palestinians.

This is why Faaborg-Andersen’s suggestion was so strange. If anything, Europe is still light years away from understanding the true nature of Islamist terrorism, which has for decades mainly victimized Europe’s Jews.

“In Europe we have adopted a holistic approach to fighting terrorism,” the Danish envoy proudly pontificated, in apparent ignorance of grim reality. (...)

Retired British colonel Richard Kemp, the well-respected former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and a staunch defender of Israel, called Faaborg-Andersen’s statements “chutzpah.” “Not only does Israel have nothing to learn from the EU,” Kemp said, “but the EU is guilty of encouraging terrorism in Israel.”

He was apparently referring to the EU’s timid kowtowing to the narrative espoused by Abbas, while ignoring the effects of his ongoing incitement of terrorists, whom he reimburses for their “heroic martyrdom” by paying both them and their families millions of dollars in stipends.

And yet the Europeans, separately or collectively, have not stopped condemning Israel in their resolutions (UN, UNESCO)... As regards France, it abstains ...

Each country defends its own interests, which are not always compatible with our (Israel's) own interests. Moreover, the situation in the Middle East is never without consequences in France, since its Arab-Muslim community - the most important in Europe - identifies with the Palestinian cause. And since Israel is one of the most powerful countries in the region, with strong economic and military capabilities at its disposal, it is expected that it will make great concessions. But people forget that the country is permanently under threat, and that its security is therefore paramount. The conflict is not limited to Palestinian land claims, we must also confront Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and even Dae'ch. Pressure through the international community is not what will lead to peace.

Monday, August 28, 2017

A municipality in suburban Paris warned farmers of an elevated risk of theft of sheep and fowl ahead of the Muslim and Jewish holidays of Eid al-Adha and Yom Kippur, respectively.

The warning, which provoked angry reactions on the part of communal leaders who saw it as discriminatory, came in a letter sent earlier this month by a branch of the police department of Hauts-de-Seine, an area comprising several suburbs east of the French capital, the Le Parisien Weekly reported last week.

The letter instructed farmers to practice “the highest degree of alertness” ahead of Eid al-Adha, which this year falls on Sept. 1, and Yom Kippur 28 days later because followers of those religions perform “unauthorized sacrifices” of sheep and chickens, respectively. (...)

“Ill-intentioned individuals could try to catch the animals in order to perform clandestine slaughters,” the circular also warned.

Joel Mergui, president of the Consistoire, the organization responsible for providing religious services to Jewish communities, said that after reading about the circular, he was “amazed to discover” that he “suddenly and collectively, with all the coreligionists of the Jewish faith, became a potential chicken thief,” he told the La Croix daily on Friday.

Following protests over the circular, a spokesman for the Public Security department of the region told Le Parisien “it was a matter of vigilance” that “was not intended to cause offense.” (...)

To Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jews, the inclusion of the Jewish holiday in the police circular was one of many cases in which “Jews are equated, compared, amalgamated” with Muslims incorrectly as a tactic for deflecting accusation of Islamophobia.

“This systematic tendency by politicians and in the media, and this time by administrative authorities, has become intolerable and unacceptable,” he was quoted as saying by La Croix.

The terrorist attack in Barcelona last Thursday appears to be just another link in the radical Islamist chain of carnage being inflicted on the free world. There was nothing new about the attack, tactically or conceptually. Ever since Palestinian terrorists discovered that trucks, tractors and other vehicles could be turned into weapons of murder and used against the hated infidels, the method has been adopted by attackers in France, Britain and Germany, among other places.

In the hours following the Barcelona attack, Britain's Sky News compiled a list of ramming attacks that have taken place over the past year. The attack that killed four Israeli soldiers on Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv promenade in January was nowhere to be seen on the list. A similar list, which also made no mention of the attack in Israel, appeared on the BBC. Although they are competitors, both of these networks were remarkably unified in their decision to conceal the facts. Like many in Europe, they try to avoid having to admit that Israelis and Europeans are in the same boat.

The attack on Catalonia's capital has further sharpened the distinction between those who recognize the growing threat and those who would like to obscure it in the hope that it will disappear from the public eye. Spain's conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy displayed admirable moral clarity when he said that radical Islam presents the greatest threat to the continent. But a fairly large camp in Spain and its neighboring countries is doing everything possible to sweep this fact under the rug.

Instead of facing this reality, members of the Spanish Left prefer to attack and denigrate Israel. Barcelona's city council called for a boycott of the Jewish state just a few months ago. Official representatives of the Catalonian government met with representatives from a number of radical groups, including Hamas. The BDS movement's Catalonia branch did not even wait for the blood of the Barcelona victims to dry before taking the classic propaganda step of turning facts on their head to announce that Europe itself was responsible for the attack. It is no coincidence that the same elements that incite against Israel also whitewash radical Islam. While one hand defends terrorism, the other hand demonizes Israel in an effort to push a confused public toward the false conclusion that stiff-necked Zionists are to blame for Europe's suffering.

To some of us, it is hardly a secret that anti-Semitic violence is on the rise in Europe, or that the chief perpetrators are Muslims. But many politicians and news media have been so indefatigable in their efforts to obscure this uncomfortable fact that one is always grateful for official -- or, at least, semi-official -- confirmation of what everyone already knows.

It is a pleasure, then, to report that a new study, Antisemitic Violence in Europe, 2005-2015 --written by Johannes Due Enstad of the Oslo-based Center for Studies of the Holocaust and the University of Oslo, and jointly published by both institutions -- is refreshingly, even startlingly, honest about its subject. Enstad notes that while anti-Semitic violence has declined in the U.S. since 1994, it has been on the rise worldwide. That, of course, includes Europe -- most of it, anyway.

Examining statistics from France, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Russia, Enstad points out that one of these seven countries "clearly stands out with a very low number" of anti-Semitic incidents despite its "relatively large Jewish population"; the country in question, he adds, "is also the only case in which there is little to indicate that Jews avoid displaying their identity in public." In addition, it is the only one of the six countries in which the majority of perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence are not Muslims. Which country is Enstad referring to? Russia. (...)

Nearly 10% of French Jews say they have been physically attacked for being Jewish during the past five years; in Germany and Sweden the figure is about 7.5%, in Britain nearly 5%. Asked how often they "avoid visiting Jewish events or sites" for fear of danger, 7.9% of Jews in Sweden say they do so frequently, followed by their coreligionists in France, Germany, and Britain (where the number is only 1.2%). Asked if they "avoid wearing, carrying or displaying things" in public that would identify them as Jews, 60% of Swedish Jews say they do so "all the time" or "frequently," with, again, France, Germany, and Britain following in that order.

Almost 50% of French Jews have considered emigrating because they feel imperiled in their own country; for Germany the figure is 25%, and for Sweden and Britain it is just under 20%.

Enstad weighs official statistics from all of the countries under examination, but finds that while those from most of the countries essentially jibe with the results of independent studies, those published by both Germany and Sweden are fishy, in some cases betraying an apparent effort by officials to massage the numbers to avoid certain uncomfortable facts. While an independent survey, for example, concludes that right-wing extremists make up a small minority of perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence in Germany, German police statistics blame most such violence on just right-wingers. (...) Another problem is that German officials categorize some incidents -- including the fire-bombing of a synagogue -- as anti-Israeli, not anti-Semitic.

Of course, the exclusive attribution of anti-Semitism to the far-right is ridiculous, as is the distinction between "anti-Israeli" and "anti-Semitic." But this kind of wordplay on the part of German officialdom is not surprising. Such fiddling with semantics and statistics in order to avoid pointing the figure at Muslims is thoroughly consistent with the current practice by both the German government and media of downplaying the extent of Muslim sexual assaults and other crimes -- most notoriously, of course, in the wake of the New Year's Eve 2016 mass sexual assaults in Cologne, after which, as the commentator Ezra Levant put it, not only did Cologne's police chief lie about the extent of the atrocities, but "[t]he media lied. The Justice Minister lied too. The mayor lied." It is also consistent with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration's fierce determination to stamp out criticism of Muslims.

The Swedish government's numbers are also dubious. While attributing a "minority" of anti-Semitic incidents to "right-wing extremists," official Swedish reports prefer not to say who is responsible for the majority of them. The closest they come to doing so is to state that many "expressions of antisemitism" are "linked to... conflicts in the Middle East." It seems clear that this is a euphemistic way of indicating that the perpetrators in question are Muslims. In any event, anecdotal evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that most of the people who commit anti-Semitic violence in Sweden are, indeed, Muslims. For example, Judith Popinski, a concentration-camp survivor living in Malmö, told the Sunday Telegraph back in 2010 that she had begun experiencing the same "hatred" in that city that had once been directed at her by the Nazis, only this time, she said, it "comes from Muslim immigrants. The Jewish people are afraid now."(...)

(...) It is not, of course, from the right that the existential threat to the Jews of France has emerged, but from the very immigrants its rhetoric and policies have targeted (which is not, of course, to say that the National Front is philo-Semitic either). The “home to both the largest Jewish population,” as Kirchik writes, “and the largest Muslim population on the continent,” France has become a notoriously dangerous place for Jews. “Anti-Semitic attacks in France comprise 51 percent of all hate crimes even though Jews represent less than 1 percent of the population.” Most of this anti-Semitic violence, from harassment to arson, murder, and pogrom-like street violence, is perpetrated by radicalized Muslims. In 2006, there was the famous, horrific “kidnapping, three-week-long torture, and murderous dismemberment of twenty-one-year-old Ilan Halimi” in Paris by a Muslim-led gang who called themselves “the Barbarians.”In 2012, Mohammed Merah, an Islamist activist of Algerian descent, murdered or maimed four soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban in Southern France and then killed a Jewish teacher and three Jewish preteen children in Toulouse at point blank. In 2014, “at the height of the Gaza War, what can only be described as a pogrom descended on the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue” in Paris.

A crowd of several hundred people, chanting “Death to Jews” [in Arabic] and wielding iron bars and axes, tried to break into the building where about 200 worshippers were caught inside . . . Though French police rushed to the scene, one witness reported that, had it not been for members of the vigilante Jewish Defense League, “the synagogue would have been destroyed.”

In 2015, in the wake of a mass shooting of journalists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in central Paris, an ISIS supporter of Malian descent shot a policewoman near a Jewish school in Montrouge in southern Paris, and then, the following day, killed four hostages at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris.

As recently as April 2017, as we were about to elect a new president in France, a 66-year-old Orthodox Jewish kindergarten director was tortured for an hour in her home in Paris by a young Muslim neighbor who was heard shouting “Allahu Akbar.” After throwing her lifeless body out of the window of her third-story apartment, he prayed. Although police at the scene delayed storming the apartment while waiting for the anti-terrorist unit, there is currently a roiling public controvesy as to whether this will be prosecuted as a hate crime. These are but the headlines of daily life in France over the last decade.

No wonder then that the French Jews, in spite of their remarkable achievements as a community since 1945 and their no less remarkable contribution to French culture, are now leaving their country in large numbers. Two thousand French Jews emigrated to Israel in 2011. Four years later, Kirchick reports, the number had quadrupled. In fact, the decline is steeper than even these numbers suggest, for one has also to take into account those French Jews who settle in Israel as students or visitors without formally undertaking aliyah, not to speak of those who opt for other countries. Kirchick quotes the famous remarks of then–prime minister Manuel Valls after the January 2015 killing spree in Paris:

Manuel Valls, the son of Spanish immigrants, declared, “If 100,000 French people of Spanish origin were to leave, I would never say that France is not France anymore. But if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France.”

At the present rate of emigration, this will take no more than two decades, probably much less. And yet even if we Jews stay, France, and its Muslim communities, must figure out how they will be integrated into a modern democratic society if France is to remain a viable nation.

Radical Islamic brotherhoods and preachers seem to understand their migration to an originally non-Muslim Europe as part of a religious-political conquest, and many Muslims in France seem to accept this radical Islamist proposition at some level. On this understanding, Europe’s very acquiescence to a multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious societal model appears to be an admission of weakness. Ironically, they have a point. The political class has, too often, been unable to confront immigrant communities, even when basic legal and societal norms are challenged. Muslim neighborhoods have indeed been turned into “no-go zones,” not ghettoes where minorities are secluded, but areas from which non-Muslims have been de facto expelled.

Friday, August 25, 2017

“Jews are not here permanently,” the chief rabbi of Catalonia, Meir Bar Hen, declared after the Barcelona terror attack. “I tell my congregants: Don’t think we’re here for good. And I encourage them to buy property in Israel. This place is lost. Don’t repeat the mistake of Algerian Jews, of Venezuelan Jews. Better [get out] early than late.”

Although he later tempered his comments as a result of community pressure, Rabbi Bar Hen hit a central nerve of Jewish Exile: the question of whether persecution is afoot and we should flee before doomsday. (...)

Rabbi Bar Hen’s approach is different. He does not fear that the Spanish government will turn against the Jews. He fears that the radicalized fringe of Spain’s Muslim community will produce more terrorists like the swiftly indoctrinated Barcelona cells, with the local Jewish community in its crosshairs.

Rabbi Bar Hen’s view is more in tune with the reality of the non-governmental purveyors of anti-Semitic hatred in the 21st century. However, he too misses out on an essential truth of today’s Diaspora: when it comes to the danger of anti-Semitism in Europe, not all Jews are created equal.

In France, for instance, we can roughly classify the Jews into three groups: (1) the French Jewish professional, reasonably well integrated and secular enough to be “Jewishly invisible”; (2) the religiously observant Jew who can afford to live in the enclaves where Jewish life has concentrated, send her children to Jewish school, walk to synagogue, and work and dwell in relatively safe neighborhoods; and, (3) the identified Jews of the banlieues or public housing, known to their neighbors, whether or not they are observant.

For the first two categories, the Jewishly invisible and the sheltered Jew, it is possible to go through a normal day without a spit on the ground, a dirty look, a pull of the beard, or the fear of a horrendous attack, such as that which, most recently, took the life of Sarah Halimi.

The public housing or banlieue Jews, on the other hand, are front line targets for radicalized jihadists and the new anti-Semites. At any time, those Jews may be confronted with the indignities and dangers of Exile, not from the government but from homegrown attackers, whether they be “lone wolves,” ISIS-powered terrorist cells, or merely neighborhood thugs driven by hatred of the Jew.

It is high time for those exposed Jews to leave their beleaguered corners of France. Although the government of France does not endorse their oppression, the France that they live in no longer resembles that of yesterday and the day before.

Sadly, those who most need to leave likely have the least resources to do so, and find themselves stuck in hostile neighborhoods. We cannot speak in generalities about “French Jews” or “European Jewry.” We must focus on at-risk Jews; it is a Zionist and Jewish duty to lend them a helping hand.

On World Photography Day, over 40 Portuguese photographers, teachers of photography and photography students have launched a pledge not to accept professional invitations or financing from the State of Israel and to refuse to collaborate with Israeli cultural institutions complicit in Israel’s regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid.

The pledge is the first of its kind (...) The photographers pledge to boycott Israel until it“complies with international law and respects the human rights of Palestinians.”

Among the pledge supporters are João Pina, winner of the 2017 Prémio Estação Imagem Viana do Castelo, Portugal’s only photojournalism award and Nuno Lobito, TV personality and one of the most travelled Portuguese of all times (204 countries, 193 recognised). (...)

“Having witnessed first-hand the crimes Israel is committing daily against Palestinians, signing up to this initiative has become a natural step. It is fundamental to promote this effort through all means possible.”

(...) Traveller-photographer Nuno Lobito said :

“It is time for Israel’s brand of apartheid to enjoy the same treatment as South African apartheid and be target of a comprehensive internacional boycott until it respects human rights. Photographers can no longer be silent about the treatment of their Palestinian colleagues living under an indefensible occupation that has lasted for over half a century. Palestinians have called for solidarity through boycotts and this pledge is our practical contribution to their struggle.”

“The history of photography is full of examples, from the 19th century to today, of photographers who gave their sight to the service of the oppressed and destitute.”

For João Henriques, winner of the 2015 Fnac New Talents Award, “to participate in this solidarity initiative for Palestine is to believe in the power of photography to provide testimony, to create conscience and to have empathy for the Other.”

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Commenting on deadly attacks in Catalonia, the chief rabbi of that region in Spain said his community is doomed, partly because of radical Islam and the alleged reluctance of authorities to confront it.

Rabbi Meir Bar-Hen has been encouraging his congregants to leave Spain, which he called during an interview with JTA a “hub of Islamist terror for all of Europe,” for years before the attacks Thursday and Friday, he said. At least 14 victims and five suspected terrorists were killed in Barcelona and the resort town of Cambrils, 75 miles south of that city.

To Bar-Hen, whose community on Friday resumed activities that it had suspended briefly following the Barcelona attack, “Jews are not here permanently,” he said of the city and region. “I tell my congregants: Don’t think we’re here for good. And I encourage them to buy property in Israel. This place is lost. Don’t repeat the mistake of Algerian Jews, of Venezuelan Jews. Better [get out] early than late.”

Rabbi Avraham Gigi [Albert Guigui] spoke to Israeli radio station 103 FM about the atmosphere of fear in the Belgian capital that has been in a state of near lockdown for the past three days.

"Since Shabbat the city has been paralyzed. The synagogues were closed, something which has not happened since World War Two. People are praying alone or are holding small minyanim [small prayer groups] at private homes. Schools and theaters are closed as are most large stores and public events are not permitted. We live in fear and wait for instructions from the police or the government," he said.

Gigi gave a breakdown of the Belgian Jewish population which he said numbered 50,000.

"There are 25,000 Jews in Brussels, 18,000 in Antwerp and the rest live in smaller places. There has been aliya to Israel as well as emigration to Canada and the US. People understand there is no future for Jews in Europe," he said.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

The Swiss Foreign Ministry announced that it suspended funds and support for the Ramallah-based Palestinian NGO Human Rights International Humanitarian Law Secretariat because the organization failed to cut ties to terrorism, according to a Sunday report in the Swiss newspaper Sonntags Zeitung.

“This is an important first step in NGO funding accountability by the Swiss Foreign Ministry, and reflects the recent legislation on this issue,” Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the president of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
“In halting payment to WATC [Women Affairs Technical Committee], the Swiss follow similar moves by Denmark and Holland.

The radical Palestinian NGO is one of many funded by these countries through the Ramallah-based Human Rights Secretariat, with an annual budget of $4 million,” he added.
He asserted that “a number of the recipients are affiliated with the PFLP terror organization.

A solicitor who wrote on Facebook that it was a shame that a plane carrying Jewish refugees had not blown up has been fined £25,000.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found the comments of Majid Mahmood, 40, a criminal defence solicitor and director of Liberty Law Solicitors in Luton, to be antisemitic, deeply unattractive and despicable.

The tribunal said: “Causing offence to the public to the detriment of the collective reputation of the profession was unacceptable.
The intemperate language used, the hatred manifested, including against Zionists as well as Jewish people, and wishing them dead by graphic means were terrible ideas for a solicitor to be promoting.”

Mahmood had argued that it was Facebook’s fault for sparking controversial debate and that the posts were made in a private capacity, although his profile said he was a solicitor.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

The trivialization of the Holocaust has become a common form of protest in Europe. French-speakers call it the "banalization" of the Holocaust - it now serves to criticize anyone you don't agree with and to affirm your (the accuser's) moral superiority.

A planned performance art installation titled "Auschwitz on the Beach" has sparked the ire of the German Jewish community for comparing Europe's current immigration crisis to the Holocaust.

The installation will begin on August 24 in the German city of Kassel as part of the Documenta 14 exhibit, an international modern art exhibition considered one of the most important in the world.
The performance installation will be presented by Italian and Brazilian artists and is based in a poem written by the Italian Marxist philosopher Franco "Bifo" Berardi, a known radical leftist. (...)

According to Berardi's explanation of the performance, which will be presented in English on Thursday and Saturday and in Italian on Friday, "Europeans are building concentration camps on their own territory, and are paying their Gauleiter [the ruler of a Nazi province] of Turkey, Libya, and Egypt to do the dirty work on the coast of the Mediterranean where saltwater has replaced Zyklon B."

"Extermination is the word accurately defining the sentiment and behavior of the majority of the European people and the political action of the European governments," Berardi claims.
"Rather than facing our historical responsibility," he warns, "we reject people who are trying to escape misery and wars and unchain themselves from our colonization. We made crossing the sea from North Africa to the southern European coasts perilous. By making migration illegal we have put migrants who asked for our help in the hands of criminal traffickers. We are drowning countless children, women, and men on a daily basis." (...)

Leaders in the German Jewish community say the exhibit harms the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and relativizes Nazi war crimes. Charlotte Knobloch, former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and a Holocaust survivor, called the exhibit "grotesque" and demanded its performance be prevented.
Ilana Katz, a Jewish community leader, described the exhibit as "tasteless and hurtful" to the victims of the Holocaust.
She condemned the use of the terms "Auschwitz" and "Zyklon B" as part of an artistic and political event and called on visitors to the exhibit to take a stand. "The issue of remembering the Holocaust and the terms associated with it, and how we pass this inconceivable crime to future generations, affects all of us," she said.

A monument put up by Jews in Bulgaria to thank the town of Vidin for preventing the deportation of its Jews during the Holocaust was vandalized.

The Thanksgiving Monument, erected in 2003, was spray-painted with the words “Allah,” “Palestine,” “Hamas,” and the Islamic star and crescent moon symbol, the Shalom Organization of Jewish in Bulgaria said in a Facebook post Monday.

The organization posted photos of the vandalism, which occurred Saturday, on its Facebook page.

It has to be emphasized that this view is shared by many European commentators, namely that European government's foreign policies towards Muslim countries and their alleged unconditional support for Israel are the root causes of domestic Islamist terrorism.

Catalonia’s branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel suggested that European governments are “responsible” for a terrorist attack in the Barcelona area.

BDS Catalonia made the accusation on Friday, a day after the Islamic State terrorist group said its militants killed in the Spanish region 14 people and wounded another 100 in two incidents in and near its capital, Barcelona.

Following a paragraph that states that BDS Catalonia “wishes to condemn the attacks committed” and to “express solidarity with the victims and their relatives,” the statement asserts that “we also condemn the responsibility of European governments in what they are doing with their foreign and domestic policies, and their complicity in human rights violations worldwide.”

In the only reference to terrorism in the statement, the authors wrote: “We also do not forget the victims of military occupations, of wars and terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestina, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Mali, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and many other places where what happened yesterday in Barcelona is a daily occurrence.”

Monday, August 21, 2017

Police are treating as a hate crime an incident in which a man threatened to kill a Jewish passenger during a “shocking” antisemitic tirade on a London Tube train.

The passenger, who did not wish to be named, said he feared for his life when the man shouted at him: “I am the next Hitler and I am going to kill you," gesturing with his hand to simulate a gun, and making a “bang” sound to indicate a bullet being fired.

The incident happened as the passenger, a solicitor who works in the City of London, was travelling home to Golders Green on the Northern Line

He told the JC that the man had got on the train at Old Street station and sat down opposite him.

The passenger said: “The moment he sat down he stretched his legs out to me and started nudging me.

“He then removed his legs and starting swearing at me extremely loudly.

“After about a minute of non-stop abuse he got up and went towards the doors and came back to show me a picture on his phone which said something about ‘Jews killing babies.’”

The passenger, who was wearing a kippah, said: “It was clear to me and everybody in the carriage that he was targeting me because I am a Jew.

“I was extremely shocked at being spoken to like that and when he approached me with his phone I was extremely scared and expecting him to punch me at any moment.”

One of the key suspects tied to Thursday’s deadly terror rampage in the streets of Barcelona launched a series of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic tirades on social media just days before the murderous attack.

Driss Oukabir who rented the white Fiat van used to run down hapless pedestrians outside of a popular tourist hotspot in Barcelona, Spain was arrested near the scene of the attack and is considered a prime suspect in the terror plot.

At least 13 people were killed during the attack, and another 80 injured.

The attack occurred near two kosher restaurants in the La Rambla outdoor mall in Barcelona: the Maccabi Restaurant, and Maoz Falafel.

While European Jewish leaders say the attack likely did not target the Jewish institutions, Oukabir did express anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views in the days leading up to Thursday’s attack, accusing Jews of murdering Arab children and engaging in a global conspiracy “to take over the world”.

A 28-year-old Moroccan-born legal resident of the European Union, Oukabir’s social media accounts were littered with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic material prior to the shutting down of his accounts after the attack.

On his Facebook page, Oukabir posted an image of a masked gunman clutching a screaming child.

Underneath the picture Oukabir wrote: “Alas! What has happened to our Arabism. Even the children haven't been rescued from the Israeli occupation. Post this video to be watched by the whole people in the world."

The post was made just hours after an Arab terrorist broke into the Salomon family home in Halamish (Neve Tzuf) on July 21st and murdered Yosef Salomon, 70, his daughter Chaya, 46, and son Elad, 35.

Sunday, August 20, 2017

(...) Nowhere is that more apparent than when it comes to hypocritically condemning the Jewish state. Europeans roundly condemn antisemitism in public and leaders throughout Europe have made efforts to protect their Jewish communities, but when Israel suffers car rammings and stabbing attacks from the West Bank, and barrages of rockets from Islamist terrorist organizations in Gaza, far too many Europeans can’t comprehend the connection that this is an assault on Israel because of Israel’s Jewishness.

It isn’t about the well-being of the state of “Palestine” or the State of Israel or any other political issue. This is a conflict rooted in the Muslim denial of the right of the Jewish people to live in its historic homeland since long before the Islamic invasions of the Middle East and Africa in 750 CE.

As long as Europeans continue to turn a blind eye to the egregious antisemitism that saturates Palestinian society – such as the Palestinian Authority’s payment of stipends to terrorists who murder civilians and their families – its explicitly antisemitic teachings proliferate.

These include gems such as that Jews are descendants of “apes and pigs” that is ingrained in young Palestinian children from birth, the public embrace and praise of terrorists, the purposeful misinformation campaigns aimed at inciting violence against Jews, (note, not Israelis, but “Yahood”). As long as this continues and Europe ignores it, what evidence do we have that they’ve learned anything at all from the Holocaust? Many Germans, at least initially, wanted to see their country rise again after the disaster of WWI, possibly motivated not as much by racism as by the well-being of their country. They felt they had been given unfair treatment following the Treaty of Versailles and were taught the Jews were to blame. How is this different from what Palestinians teach their children? European governments continue to fund the PA, which utilizes many of the same dehumanizing tactics that the Nazis used.

It is these same tactics which made it far too easy for an entire country to ignore the murder of an ethnic group of six million people.

Why then should a Palestinian terrorist, who was raised to hate the same dehumanized group, have any hesitation about murdering them? Why shouldn’t he or she, when taught from birth that the Jews are to blame for all the terrible problems in Palestine? In German eyes, the country was unfairly treated following WWI and merely wanted to restore the “greatness” of Germany. How is that different from the mantra of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free?” Why on Earth should Palestinians make peace with Israel when this is what they’re taught? The hypocrisy when it comes to condemning the only Jewish state is no different from the well-intentioned antisemitism that led to the Holocaust. Europeans ought to be the first to condemn Palestinian antisemitism and the last to provide international and political support as it follows the path of repeating the sins of Europe’s past.

Commenting on a public outcry over signs that urged Jews at a Swiss hotel to shower before entering the pool, a state lawmaker from Geneva said “Israel should apologize for its excessive tolerance of ultra-Orthodox Jews who prevent peace in Palestine.”

Roger Deneys, a Socialist representative at the Grand Council of Geneva, made the assertion Wednesday on Facebook.

Deneys deleted his comment shortly after posting it and apologized for having written “nonsense,” the online edition of the Swiss Le Matin daily reported Thursday.

In interviews with thousands of British Jews, almost a third of them said they have considered leaving the United Kingdom over the past two years due to anti-Semitism.

The findings are part of a report published Sunday by the Campaign Against Antisemitism watchdog group, which conducted since 2015 interviews with more than 10,000 British Jews together with the YouGov market research company.

In interviews conducted in 2016 and 2017 with a combined sample population of 7,156 respondents, 37 percent of them said they have been concealing in public signs that would indicate that they are Jewish.

Only 59 percent of the respondents since 2015 said they feel welcome in the United Kingdom and 17 percent said they feel unwelcome.

Only 39 percent of respondents from 2015 onward said they trust justice authorities to prosecute perpetrators of anti-Semitic hate crimes.

Three-quarters of the people interviewed said they feel that recent political events have resulted in increased hostility towards Jews. Since 2015, 80 percent of respondents said they believe that the Labour Party is harboring anti-Semites in its ranks.

Friday, August 18, 2017

The recent events at Charlottesville, the fate of Confederate monuments in the United States and President Trump's reactions have drawn a lot of fire in Belgium - the media whose anti-US bias is no secret have commented very negatively about the events and Trump. But how does francophone Belgium fare in this respect? Take the case of the arch-antisemite and socialist Edmond Picard, "inventor of a so-called 'scientific and humanitarian' anti-Semitism". For Picard Jews are disgusting, the absolute scum of the earth, with no redeeming features. Does it matter? Not really. He has a street named after him in Brussels and a statue at the Brussels Court House (see below). Not only was he an anti-Semite but he was also a racist who compared blacks to apes. All in the name of science and for the benefit of mankind.

In Belgium, Senator Edmond Picard, a famous socialist, developed at the end of the 19th century the theory of a so-called 'scientific and humanitarian' anti-Semitism. According to Picard, Jews were unproductive parasites who participated in usury and capitalist piracy through financial means.

He accused Jews of inventing stock exchange speculation and dominating journalism and political, as well as social, leadership throughout Europe. He acknowledged that there some (perhaps many) poor Jews as well as wealthy Jews, but claimed this did not change the fact that Jews were an inferior race. Picard's anti-Semitism also influenced some Belgian socialists, such as his disciples, Jules Destrée and Léon Hennebicq. Destrée, a prominent member of the Belgian Labour Party, associated Jews with financial speculation.

PICARD, EDMOND (1836–1924), Belgian lawyer and antisemite. Picard became an active advocate of socialism, then of antisemitic racialism, and attempted to forge an alliance between the two ideologies. He fought for the socialist cause between 1866 and 1907, when he left the Socialist Party, although he continued to call himself a socialist.

In 1888 Picard visited Morocco on a diplomatic mission and from then on turned his talents as a writer to outright racialist propaganda. Observing Arabs and Jews there, he concluded that Semites and Aryans were irreconcilable races.

In the following years he wrote La Bible et le Coran (1888), Synthèse de l'antisémitisme (1892), which was reprinted during the German occupation of Belgium in World War II, and L'Aryano-Sémitisme (1899), a collection of 19 articles previously published in the socialist daily Le Peuple under the bizarre title L'Antisémitisme scientifique et humanitaire.

Picard abhorred any intermingling of races and urged Aryans to protect themselves from the "Semitic invasion." He presented Jesus as an Aryan and the Jews as Asians.

Seeing no contradiction between antisemitism and socialism, he believed that brotherhood of the oppressed did not necessarily imply equality between all races. He was influenced by Proudhon 's anti-Jewish ouvriérisme and by Gobineau , as well as by his Catholic education which provided a receptive ground for animosity toward the Jews. He succeeded in infecting the minds of leading socialists like Hennebicq (1871–1940) and Destrée (1863–1936); but thanks to the efforts of E. Vandervelde, L. De Brouckère, and C. Huysmans, the Socialist movement in Belgium officially proscribed antisemitism. Yet the Socialist Party newspaper, Le Peuple, never refused to print Picard's articles.

A bust of Edmond Picard is on display at the Court House in Brussels. In 1994, lawyer Michel Graindorge smashed Picard's bust invoking his anti-Semitism. Graindorge was sentenced in first instance. During the appeal proceedings, the Advocate General stated that "Is the act of overthrowing the bust of a bastard honorable? In that case, there would be so many other statues that could be knocked down at the Court House." On 27 November 1995 the Court of Appeal of Brussels granted him the suspension of the sentence. In 1998, the bust was replaced by the curator of the Palace.

A Edmond Picard street was created as part of the "General Plan of alignment and expropriation by zones of the Berkendael district" (1902-1904), straddling the municipalities of Ixelles (1-43, 2-52) and Uccle, connecting the Georges Brugmann square with the Vanderkindere street.

If you can stomach the most vile anti-Semitic venom by Edmond Picard click HERE.

A British retail group has has been banned from four US states, Florida, Illinois, New York and Arizona, because of it boycotts goods originating from West Bank communities, The Jewish Chronicle reported.

The Co-operative Group, based in Manhester and founded in 1844, has businesses in food, banking, insurance, funerals and legal services.

It operates what it calls "ethical" policies, meaning its stores have not stocked settlement products since 2009. Five years ago, members expanded the ban to include Israeli companies trading in the settlements. On its website, the Co-op said that "exceptional circumstances" meant it had withdrawn trade from "the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories".

Arizona included the Co-op on a "prohibited investment lis" in March, alongside a series of financial firms and banks. New York State’s office of general services listed it as one of more than a dozen "institutions or companies determined to participate in boycott, divestment or sanctions activity targeting Israel" in May, as did Illinois’ investment policy board.

The State Board of Administration of Florida said it had scrutinised the Co-op after being directed to create a "list of companies that participate in a boycott of Israel, including actions that limit commercial relations with Israel or Israeli controlled territories".

Luke Akehurst, director of the We Believe in Israel grassroots group which campaigns against boycotts, said: "The Co-op Group’s boycott of certain Israeli suppliers has done nothing to advance peace and coexistence or to help the Palestinians.

"All it has achieved is to alienate Jewish and other pro-Israel customers from the Co-op and now to get them added to a list of BDS-supporting companies that several US states can’t invest in.

This cartoon features on Alain Soral's blog Egalité et Réconciliation. Alain Soral, who is a friend of Dieudonné, is known for his antisemitism. Both Soral and Dieudonné are very popular in France.

"France!! beware... the cockroaches are on the go"

President Emmanuel Macron is represented as a cockroach and so are the other "cockroaches" who surround him and who are all Jewish:
Jacques Attali (dubbed the "chief cockroach"), Bernard-Henri Levy, Jack Lang, Alain Finkielkraut and Julien Dray.
To avoid any doubts about their Jewish origins, Attali is pictured with a Star of David medal pinned on a blue and white striped ribbon evocative of the garb deportees were made to wear.Finally they all come out of a toilet bearing the initials of the CRIF (an umbrella organization of French Jewish organizations) and the LICRA (an anti-racist organisation targeted by anti-Semites who believe it is run by Jews for the benefit of Jews). Next to it, stands a "French Republic" toilet with the door closed.So what's the message? France must be be watchful because the "cockroaches" are "on the go" (a reference to President Macron's party La République En Marche) and ready to control him.